Kia Franklin

Applying the Dream to Civil Justice

Early on as a blogger on TortDeform, I faced a commenter’s accusation that I, as a fellow at the Drum Major Institute, was not doing the kind of work and thinking that Dr. King would have embraced. Well, King’s legacy is something that we embrace not just in name, but also in practice. Since my work focuses on the civil justice system and its efficacy as a means for empowering regular Americans in their personal and community-wide struggles for a more just society, today on MLK day I am reflecting on what Dr. King would say about the state of civil justice. How has the dream he articulated for this country evolved? What is the 2008 version of Dr. King’s dream? And if he could, how would he answer the question he himself posed: “Where do we go from here?”

Activist and scholar Grace Lee Boggs has provided poignant analysis on this question, looking at various speeches King made toward the end of his life and his work. She argues that a glimpse at some of his later works reveals part of the answer. Four years ago she said:

As I have read and re-read King’s speeches and writings from the last two years of his life, it has become increasingly clear to me that King’s prophetic vision is now the indispensable starting point for 21st-century revolutionaries.

As a result, in his major writings and speeches in the last two years of his life (Where Do We Go From Here: Community or Chaos? and Time to Break Silence), King began to project a new kind of radical revolution that would begin the shift from a “thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society.”

He rejected the dictatorship of technology, which, he said, diminishes people because it eliminates their sense of participation. “Enlarged material powers,” he warned repeatedly, “spell enlarged peril if there is no proportionate growth of the soul.” “When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people,” he said, “the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”

“Disinherited people all over the world,” he said, “are bleeding to death from deep social and economic wounds.” In order for the United States to get on the right side of this world revolution, we must “undergo a radical revolution in values.”

I pulled up his speech “Beyond Vietnam,” which outlines this revolution in values. It is as applicable today as it was 40 years ago:

It is a sad fact that because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch antirevolutionaries… Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores, and thereby speed the day when “every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain.”

A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies.

This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one’s tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all mankind.

These sentiments are just cause for reflection. Proponents of civil justice constantly battle against vigorous opposition by people who are in favor of corporate privilege even if it plays out at the expense of human welfare. The task of respecting human dignity and human life (what King called “somebodiness”) becomes glaringly important in this context, and that’s what the civil justice system, or at least the movement for access to the civil justice system, is about. The civil justice system provides but one way for individuals and communities to resist the direction our government is taking by placing corporate interests over those of the people that corporations are supposed to serve. When it’s functioning properly, it provides the necessary “check” against corporate privilege and governmental abuse.

Now, that’s not to say that reforms to our legal system aren’t needed. Indeed, as citizens we should remain in a posture of constant critique of the system and its efficacy in dispensing justice for all and not just for some. It’s simply that the reforms we hear being thrown around right now, tort “reforms” that stifle the access to justice movement and deform our civil justice system, must be met with with effective reforms that would actually increase access to justice. This includes improvements like implementing Civil Gideon, and cutting out loopholes in the court system like misuse of the preemption doctrine and secret settlement agreements which allow corporate wrongdoers to hide their misdeeds behind the letter of the law.

I think civil justice advocates are best off not focusing on responding to accusations that their work runs contrary to Dr. King’s vision, or the vision of any other person who believes in a fair and just society that treats all people with respect and dignity, regardless of their political clout. Instead, we should focus on asking how we can work proactively to change the system so that it works even better for those who need it the most.

Posted at 5:51 PM, Jan 21, 2008 in Civil Justice | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack (0)